If you have a gap in your income right now and you're out of escrows, what's the cause of that?

The cause isn't anything you're doing right now.

It's not the market conditions.

It's not something you just did yesterday or the day before.

It's actually something you've done 90 days ago.

Whenever I do this with my coaching students when they're having a gap in closings, I tell them to look back to 90 days ago.

What were you doing 90 days ago? Let's really look at the calendar and open it up. When we open up that calendar, we'll inevitably see a gap.

Maybe they went on vacation. Maybe they just took a few weeks off because something was going on in their lives and they stopped prospecting 90 days ago. And that's what comes forward like a snake eating an egg. It just travels down the timeline and then boom, it blows up resulting in them having no escrows in the moment.

So how do we eliminate this situation so we don't have gaps in the future?

It's all about consistency. ...

I have a question for you:

Who is your #1 competitor in your marketplace?

When I ask that to a live audience, I'll hear all kinds of the typical brand answers. You'll hear the brands in their marketplace: Remax, Coldwell Banker, eXp, John L. Scott, Sotheby's, etc.

And I always tell them, you're all wrong. Your #1 competitor in your market is Zillow. Zillow is coming to eat your breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And in a large degree, they already are. Now, yes, Zillow has stumbled with their flipping operation. But does that mean they're going away? No. If anything, we should be more terrified now than ever, because they're going to turn and focus their entire attention back to where they actually started out, which is selling leads to REALTORS. They are not going away.

What does this mean? When lose something to Remax or eXp, you need to ask yourself:

Did I really lose that listing to those companies? Or did somebody go on Zillow, fill out a form, and then somebody at tho...

What is your power base?

Have you ever heard that term before? Well, your power base is a measurement and it's a great measurement that all of us should understand and really work towards improving over the course of the next 12 months.

So here's what it is:

It's the amount of sales your database is producing every year per member. So I'm going to give you an example to kind of put this in perspective:

Let's say you have a guy named John. John's a realtor has been in the business for years. Let's say John sold 22 homes last year. And his database size was 232. So we had 232 people on his database, created 22 closed signs last year. He can simply divide the 232 by 22 and this gives him his power base number, which is 10.5.

What does that mean? That means for every 10 and a half people in his database, he's averaging one closed sale.

What's the national average?

It's about 10. So if you're doing 10 and a half, your database quality, may not be quite on par or on targe...

What is Q2?

Well, Q2 is your most valuable asset. And you might not even know it.

Your most valuable asset is your database, your sphere of influence, we know that.

But what's Q2 mean?

Q2 represents the quality and the quantity of your database. So let's look at those two issues and how they can impact your bottom line coming into the new year.

Let's start with the quantity. What does that mean? Well, if we know that for every 10 people in our database, we'll average one closed sale, knowing that quantity makes a big difference. In fact, when I talk to agents on a regular basis, and I ask, how many transactions did you close last year? And they say 10, 12, I'll say, how big is your database? Let me guess. It's probably 80 to 120 am I right? Most people will say, yeah, you're right on the money.

Why?

Because your database is a reflection of your performance. Smaller database, smaller performance. Larger database, larger performance. That's just the nature of the beas...

This time of year, a lot of people start thinking about pivoting — making a fundamental change in their business strategy. That's a good idea, because if you want to have that 90 degree turn in your business, you need to think about what you can do to actually make that a reality.

Not just talk about it, but actually make it a reality.

I'm gonna give you five quick points that I've learned over the years that can really help you have a successful pivot in your business and make fundamental change happen for you.

1. Mental toughness

This is underrated, but how many of us have started new year's resolutions with the best of intentions, but then falling apart within 30 days? We’ve all been guilty of that (myself included).

So mental toughness, getting your mind, your body, your spirit in alignment with that decision and saying, I'm not just doing this today or tomorrow or next day or next week, I'm doing it for the entire year. And really committing to that. That's where...

At this time of year, a lot of sellers will say something like this:

"Hey Jim, I think I'm just going to wait because I will probably get more from my house later anyway. So I'm just going to wait until spring or summer and see what happens then."

How do we address that comment or that concern?

I'm going to give you one script that's worked for me over the years. And it works by talking about the fact that when we're staying and rebuying in the same market, waiting doesn't make a lot of sense.

So let's put this in practice. You might say,

"Hey, I hear what you're saying, but here's something to consider, right? If you're buying or selling in the same market -- because the entire market's going up in value at the same time -- waiting to sell your home to buy another home just means the other home you're buying is also going up in value at the same time.

In fact, there's a little bit of a Delta that if you're buying a higher priced home, it might be more expensive the ...

Now we've all heard of supply chain issues hitting the entire country. Lots of things happening because of COVID breaking down the supply chains.

But is this impacting real estate?

It absolutely is impacting real estate. It's impacting builders. It's impacting all kinds of vendors that are tied to real estate.

My wife and I are remodeling a house and we've had to wait six months for the cabinets to come in. It's impacting remodeling and flipping and all kinds of areas that we don't necessarily consider tied to the supply chain.

But real estate is definitely one of those areas.

So how can we use this?

Here's one way we can use it when we're out prospecting is talking about supply chain issues because everybody can identify with it right now.

So you might just say:

"Hey, you know, what, can you do me a huge favor? Even real estate is facing supply chain issues. We're facing very low inventory compared to most years and huge buyer demand. So if you see any for sale by ...

At this time last year, 46% of sellers were offering some kind of incentive to buyers to encourage them to make an offer on their house over the competition.

Now, those incentives could have been anything from closing costs, down payment assistance, home warranties, pre-paying for services. There were lots of different incentives that could have been thrown into the mix.

But this year that number has dropped down to 26%. But this is still a very high number.

And you can describe this to sellers like this: 

"Hey, listen, it might be kind of surprising, but about one out of every four of sellers that we're competing with in the marketplace is actually offering an incentive to the buyer to encourage them to make an offer on their home. So it's something for us to consider. We got a great price, but maybe that would make our home stand out just a little bit more is thinking about an incentive.

Let me describe what could mean:

It could be in closing costs, down payment as...

What are the top seven reasons why someone would want to sell in your market?

Well, according to the National Association of REALTORS new profile of home buyers and sellers across the country, here are the top reasons:

1. They want to move closer to family and friends — 18% of the time.

2. Their home is too small — 17% of the time.

3. Their neighborhood has become less desirable — 11% of the time.

4. Their home is too large — 9% of the time.

(Add the too large to the too small, and you got 26% of the time they want to sell has to do with the size of their home.)

5. A change in their family situation — 9% of the time.

6. Moving due to retirement — 7% of the time.

7. Job relocation — another 7% of the time.

So why do we care?

Here's the reason why:

Instead of talking about generalities like do you want to sell your home? Are you ready to move? Let's talk about specifics when you're doing marketing —whether geographic marketing, social media marketing, sphere of in...

Join this conversation featuring the founder of Lion Bolt Media and the host of the Real Estate Titan Podcast as we explore how agents can quickly scale their business using technology. Greg has had the privilege of learning from and teaching thousands of real estate professionals from all over the world for well over a decade. With over 17 years in the sales and digital marketing space Greg has become one of the foremost experts in real estate technology, tools and trends. His dedication to constant education and research has enabled him to help countless real estate professionals across the country become top producers and accelerate their overall growth in real estate to the highest levels. Ambitious, passionate, and loyal, Greg has left an indelible mark on the industry and won over many fans and clients impressed by his digital marketing knowledge, energy, and professionalism. This is a can’t miss episode!